That Bullying Thing

 So…while I’ve been trying to manage my own head over, well, everything, something else has come up. Because, you know, there’s always something else.

Upcoming is younger’s wisdom teeth extraction; he has all four, and all four need to come out. He’s understandably anxious about it; anxiety has a way of unmasking other things.

To wit: we’re in the car heading from point A to point B. He’s reviewing what that week is going to look like; what foods he can and cannot eat. “Steak!” He exclaimed. “I won’t be able to eat steak!”

(Side note: steak is a rare treat, but the idea that he will not be able to consume it at will has him a little upset.)

I assure him we can do a celebratory steak when his mouth is healed—why not? Then his musings take on a sharp digression.

“So I can skip work that week.”

He has my full attention. I’ve noticed the last couple of weeks that he has come home from his job of two years quiet, a little surly, and deeply reflective. He suddenly is not talking about work at all, and that conversation brought him here screams for probing.

G doesn’t do well with screaming. I side-eye him waiting at the light. His jaw is set, and he’s staring ahead. The next couple of minutes are going to be tricky, and I need to choose my words carefully.

“So. Why do you want to skip work? You’ll have almost a week behind you by that point.”  I’m trying to keep my tone inquisitive but neutral: any excitement will shut him down.

He shrugs. “The guys like to mess with me.”

I pause. “Do you mess with them back?”

“I try to be patient.”

Holy shit.

“Have you talked with your manager?”

He shrugs again. “She says they like me, they’re only fooling around.”

And this is where I take a deep breath to shut down the screaming in my own head. The calmness in my response shocks me, because I AM NOT CALM. I have spent the better part of the last decade learning to trust my own senses and feelings after a lifetime of being told that I “take things too personally,” or whoever was “just kidding around” or  that someone “hopes I get the help I need,” for clearly, I am crazy for feeling what I feel. 

I’ll be damned if either of my guys get stuck in that particular prison.

“That,” I reply, it seems a billion years later, “is unacceptable.”

He shrugs again.

“No, really. This is where you tell them to stop. And if they don’t, SHE needs to tell them to stop. And if she doesn’t,” I shrug, “there are lots of other places where you can work.”

“But they feed me.” Very matter of fact.

I laugh. So G. “But is it worth it, if they are making you feel a certain way, and it doesn’t stop?”

We leave it there for the moment.

He comes home from work yesterday, not happy, bandaged hand. Apparently one of the coworkers threw hands when G told him to stop and scratched him. He then apologized profusely and applied first aid. His manager wasn’t there.

He took pictures of his hand, and he’s going in this week to have a conversation about what happened.

And he’s going to figure out what next.

His brother, a hardened veteran of bullying, has lots of things to say about what G needs to do. G listens. And quietly tells brother that he needs to do things his own way.

He’s writing his own script. And he may or may not share it.